Cheney: 'No excuses' regarding Walter Reed

[sabra]

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2007/03/cheney-no-excuses-regarding-walter.html

Cheney: 'No excuses' regarding Walter Reed

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney told veterans Monday there "will be no excuses" with regard to the reportedly poor conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center, the same day a House panel began hearings on the matter.

"President Bush has made our administration's priority very clear to the Congress and to the country: there will be no excuses, only action," Cheney said during remarks to the Veterans for Foreign Wars National Legislative Conference. "And the federal bureaucracy will not slow that action down. We're going to fix the problems at Walter Reed, period."

[babylonsister]

1. There's absolutely nothing else he could say. I'm not impressed. nt

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. Cheney, aren't you supposed to be in charge?

and the chimp?

where have you been for the past few years? Too busy shooting air?

[maddezmom]

3. blah, blah, blah

[rodeodance]

23. nice

[Raven]

4. So he's blaming the "federal bureaucracy"

very clever, Dick, guess who runs it.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. I hope Reid and Pelosi point out that fact

yes Chimp and Cheney run it!

[Nite Owl]

8. I noticed that with someone

at the hearings. It's one of their key words for the gumment being bad so they can privitize it and then make it cost more while being worse but their buddies make the money.

[librechik]

12. Huh? Everybody knows the Bush administration is the enemy of bureaucracy!

we'll get on that right away--by blasting the dems, the real villains in all this. They could have stopped this if they'd tried harder. But it's really the soldiers themselves who are to blame. They should have tried harder too! Now look at the mess they have made!

:sarcasm:

[sutz12]

6. There's no excuse for this whole fucking administration. nt

[Sydnie]

7. If he got his heart operations there you can bet your sweet bippy

they would have cleaned up the place LONG ago!

Go Cheney yourself Cheney!

[librechik]

9. "there should be accountability! And now I'm going to my secret bunker"

"wake me up when it's all over and 2 low level slaves/officers have been sentenced to jail for the whole thing. "

[driver8]

10. Ha Ha -- how true! n/t

[nealmhughes]

11. Too little, too late. Congress has already got the ball rolling, sorry

for the Executive Branch's reluctance to actually do more than photo ops.
Another nail in BushCo's coffin.

[Seabiscuit]

13. The legacy: Walter Reed - Another Bush Katrina Moment.

[Frustratedlady]

14. Similar action to what the Resident took on the Plame case?

They'll fire a couple flunkies and that will be the end of it.

They just don't want to pay for the troops they can't use anymore. Find a way to make the care on the soldiers' nickel and they can continue starting wars. Can't afford to pay for both, you know? Shameful.

[natrat]

15. omg-talk about hollow words-what a crook

[bdamomma]

16. Is cheney's nose getting longer, can anyone believe that these

thugs care about our military? what BS.

[Gman]

17. They're also going to do what it takes to rebuild New Orleans

[Marie26]

18. It wasn't the federal bureaucracy

It was your OUTSOURCING & PRIVATIZING the federal bureaucracy to your corporate cronies that caused this problem. Cheney claims to care about the problem, and then offers his implicit solution - less government, more Halliburton!

[Virginia Dare]

19. Another day, another pack of lies...n/t

[Ravy]

20. Cheney is never right. With his track record, I wager on lots of excuses and fingerpointing (nt)

[quiet.american]

21. You can bet "no excuses" does not include holding the Commander in Chief accountable. n/t

[sakabatou]

22. BWAHAHAHAH!

[bluedog]

24. what'd he say on February 18, 05'when man hung himself??

Behind the walls of Ward 54
February 18, 2005 this treatment of sldiers has been on going and the bush administration is totally responisble!




Ward 54
They're overmedicated, forced to talk about their mothers instead of Iraq, and have to fight for disability pay. Traumatized combat vets say the Army is failing them, and after a year following more than a dozen soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, I believe them.

By Mark Benjamin

Pages 1 2 3February 18, 2005 | Before he hanged himself with his bathrobe sash in the psychiatric ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Spc. Alexis Soto-Ramirez complained to friends about his medical treatment. Soto-Ramirez, 43, had been flown out of Iraq five months before then because of chronic back pain that became excruciating during the war. But doctors were really worried about his mind. They thought he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving with the 544th Military Police Company, a unit of the Puerto Rico National Guard, the kind of unit that saw dirty, face-to-face combat in Iraq.


But less than a month after leaving Puerto Rico, on Jan. 12, 2004, Soto-Ramirez was found dead, hanging in Ward 54. Army buddies who visited him in the days before his death said Soto-Ramirez was increasingly angry and despondent. "He was real upset with the treatment he was getting," said René Negron, a former Walter Reed psychiatric patient and a friend of Soto-Ramirez's. "He said: 'These people are giving me the runaround ... These people think I'm crazy, and I'm not crazy, Negron. I'm getting more crazy being up here.'


lots more



http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/02/18/walt...

[WorldResident]

25. I have this feeling that if the Congress was still Republican, this issue would not come to light

I'm not surprised by Dr. Gates' actions entirely (down at Texas A&M he is incredibly popular even with the unabashed liberals). However, Dr. Gates would not have been appointed had it not been for the elections.

P.S. Don't misunderstand me. I know Dr. Gates was a strong supporter of the War in Iraq. I asked him personally in 2002. In his defense, however, I was also at the time along with half of the Democratic Party. However, he has more common sense than Don Rumsfeld ever did and I can only hope that he'll keep true to his word that the troops will complete the job in a few months, even if in the end such an Administration-backed pullout will benefit the Republican candidate.

[rocktivity]

26. TRANSLATION: "No accountability, only a whitewash."

:eyes:
rocknation

[Solly Mack]

27. yap yap yap yap

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

28. lol

[sarcasmo]

29. Why does Cheney hate America.

[w4rma]

30. "will be" "will not" "going to" downplay the problems and hope they stop getting coverage. (nt)

[truthisfreedom]

31. "There will be no excuses, we're not going to talk about it, and we're going to do what we always do

which is say we'll fix it and then empty more of the Treasury into our cronys' pockets."

[Martin Eden]

32. no excuses = no accountability

By saying "no excuses" Cheney is trying to preempt any discussion of how conditions got to be so bad. He wants to shift attention away from the deliberate negligence of the Bush administration.